http://soap.stanford.edu/ en-us http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=89 WEBANYWHERE - A SCREEN READER ON THE GO WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader for the web. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card. No $1000 software program required! http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/ WEBVISUM - YOUR WEB HELPER WebVisum is a unique Firefox browser add-on which greatly enhances web accessibility and empowers the blind and visually impaired community by putting the control in their hands! Its aim is to allow you to better enjoy surfing the net and be significantly less dependent upon outside help. Just a few exciting features that we already offer: Community driven tagging and page enhancements. Automated and instant CAPTCHA image solving, sign up to web sites and make forum posts and blog comments without asking for help! Built in helper functions for easier page navigation and less confusion. Numerous under the hood page tweaks designed to help screen reader users. Visually Impaired users benefit from features such as high contrast page viewing, link and focus highlighting, and more. (mighty darned slick!! - JF) http://webvisum.com/ hACCESSIBILITY REDUX? Fanning the fires of the ABBR pattern debate in the hCalendar microformat, the developers at BBC Radio Labs announced June 23rd that they’ll be removing the microformat from their programmes listing pages, pending further accessibility testing or the establishment of a more accessible alternative. "Unfortunately there have been a number of concerns over hCalendar’s use of the abbreviation design pattern. […] Until these issues are resolved the BBC semantic markup standards have been updated to prevent the use of non-human-readable text in abbreviations." As with the debate over a year ago, the concerns raised are not about microformats as a whole being inaccessible. They’re not even strictly about the hCalendar microformat itself. The concerns are purely centred around the (mis)use of the ABBR design pattern. http://www.webstandards.org/2008/06/23/haccessibility-redux/ SHOULD LINKS OPEN IN NEW WINDOWS? No, they shouldn’t. At first glance the decision to open links in new windows or not depends on the given site and the preferences of its visitors... From the usability point of view the decision to enforce opening links in new windows violates one of the fundamental principles of the user interface design: users should always be in control of the interface they are interacting with. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/01/should-links-open-in-new-windows/ 30 ESSENTIAL PDF DOCUMENTS EVERY DESIGNER SHOULD DOWNLOAD No matter what you call them; ebook, white paper, or resource they all contain information that no designer should go without. (In actuality there are more than 30 files however it was a good round number for the title…) http://www.positivespaceblog.com/archives/pdf-documents-designer/ SWF SEARCHABILITY Adobe is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. (Not sure how this will impact on Adaptive Technology though... JF) http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html THE POINT OF "OPEN" IN OPENID TechCrunch report that Microsoft are accepting OpenID for their new HealthVault site, but with a catch: you can only use OpenIDs from two providers: Trustbearer (who offer two-factor authentication using a hardware token) and Verisign. "Whatever happened to the Open in OpenID?", asks TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid... By accepting OpenID on your site you are outsourcing the security of your users to an unknown third party, and you can’t guarantee that your users picked a good home for their OpenID. http://simonwillison.net/2008/Jun/24/openid/ FREE ONLINE SEMINAR: THE GOOGLE TRIFECTA Staying competitive in the online space can be hard if you don't have the proper tools at your disposal. That's why Google offers solutions like Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, and Google Website Optimizer to help you improve your site's effectiveness and functionality. For the first time ever, the Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and Website Optimizer teams will join forces to hold a free online seminar. DATE: Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 TIME: 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. PT (16:00 UTC) Register to attend: http://tinyurl.com/3sq47o http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=87 SURVEYMONKEY NOW MEETS ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES This is pretty big folks! "Our developers have updated our survey design system across the board in all accounts so all standard survey designs are accessible for respondents with disabilities without changing the appealing look or function of your survey." JF is smilin' http://www.surveymonkey.com/HelpCenter/Answer.aspx?HelpID=247 HIJAX: PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT WITH AJAX "It’s a whole different ball game", cried the excited developers. "See, these aren’t web pages, it’s a web application." But most applications, web-based or not, still work on a document basis. Think Word, email, even Photoshop. You’re still manipulating a file. What Ajax brings to the table is the ability to manipulate a file on the Web without constantly refreshing the whole thing. http://www.uie.com/articles/hijax/ ARIA SLIDER, PART 1 & PART 2 I know there are some developers out there who wishfully think that, in order to make their rich interface widgets accessible, all they have to do is add ARIA to it. Others are skeptical about ARIA for that very reason. The truth is of course that ARIA is only part of the effort, and work is required to make any widget accessible (whether you’re using ARIA or not). (Note: these are Parts 1 and 2 of a 3 part series - the final post will discuss how slider related ARIA properties are handled when creating a double slider. - JF) Part 1: http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=68 Part 2: http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=69 MIGRATING FROM WCAG 1.0 TO WCAG 2.0 This document has been prepared to help HTML developers and others who are familiar with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) to map their current knowledge and practices with the WCAG 2.0 W3C Candidate Recommendation of 30 April 2008. The Comparison table provided in this document aims to help practitioners quickly identify the corresponding WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria and specific “Sufficient Technique(s)” for each WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint, where an appropriate match exists. This document concentrates on HTML techniques and does not include any of the advisory techniques. http://wipa.org.au/papers/wcag-migration.htm WHEN VALIDATION BECOMES UNIMPORTANT Validation becomes unimportant once you’re ahead of the game, and not a second earlier. Even then, truly mastering HTML and CSS, it will usually be best to stick with valid markup and styling, but fighting latency might then mean a by all means legitimate reason to stretch a little bit. http://meiert.com/en/blog/20080616/validation-unimportant/ SURF RIGHT TOOLBAR The Surf Right Toolbar is designed to make adjusting certain options within Internet Explorer quicker and easier, using either the mouse or keyboard. It's a really handy tool for people who need a little bit of customization within a page to make it more readable. You can switch styles, fonts, colors, turn of JavaScript if you're getting annoyed with unsolicited page refreshes as well as images that slow you down on dial up. http://tinyurl.com/63sq49 OPERA 9.50 While Firefox hogged the lion's share of the media this week, my good friends at Opera also released a next-gen browser that is worthy of a serious look. Opera has consistently introduced new features to the web-surfing experience (they were the first with tabbed browsing, the first browser to fully support ACID 2, OperaMini is the most popular mobile browser in the world, etc.). Check out some of the latest tools available: Quick Find, Speed Dial, Mouse Gestures, Download Manager (with integrated BitTorrent support) and more. Very nifty!! http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/ 2008 DESIGN TRENDS So what’s hot now? Pencil sketches, handwritten notes, card stocks, watercolor effects, collage art, script fonts, grungy and splatter ink backgrounds (glossy gradients are not "in" this year). (No comment on how accessible/inaccessible any of these designs are, but artistic none-the-less. - JF) http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/2008-design-trends/ READDLE Readdle is a web-based service which allows you to upload books and documents to its online storage and view them on iPhone or iPod Touch. Three account levels - Free, $5.00/month or the Premium account $10.00) which features unlimited documents with 5 GB of storage. Cool! www.readdle.com http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=85 THE WHERES AND WHENS OF USERS' EXPECTATIONS Recently, a designer asked us where users expect to find the sign-in box on a web page. Some sites put it on the left and some put it on the right. Has our research shown that one position is better than alternative positions? A question like this brings up a bigger question of designing for the user's expectations. On the one hand, users, being neither new to the planet nor new to technology, have developed expectations on where certain things should appear. Designing to those expectations can reduce the user's cognitive load and let them focus on their task. www.uie.com/articles/user_expectations/ PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT OF LINKS USING THE CSS ATTRIBUTE SELECTOR We have avoided using CSS3 rules for too long. It's been difficult to justify using rules that won't work for a significant portion of our audience, Internet Explorer 7 and below. However, Internet Explorer 8 is coming out soon and does work with the features we like. CSS attribute selectors are the golden ring on the web development merry-go-round. They can be daunting to learn, addictive to use, but then disappointing when you realize they are out of your grasp when you test in Internet Explorer. We can, however, begin using them to add additional functionality based on your pre-existing, semantic code. www.last-child.com/css-attribute-selector/ WRITING STYLE FOR PRINT VS. WEB Linear vs. non-linear. Author-driven vs. reader-driven. Storytelling vs. ruthless pursuit of actionable content. Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive data. Sentences vs. fragments. www.useit.com/alertbox/print-vs-online-content.html FREE WEBINAR: ACCESSIBILITY OF NEXT GENERATION WEB APPLICATIONS: AN OVERVIEW OF WEB 2.0 The term "Web 2.0" is being used to describe new methods of using the web, innovative technologies, and next generation web applications. AJAX, blogging, wikis, content aggregation, tagging, and mashups are just a few components of "Web 2.0". Even if we have not reached a new version of the web, these new technologies and ways of using the web represent a significant change. Despite the issues that Web 2.0 technologies may have on accessibility, the very nature of these applications can potentially result in much higher levels of accessibility for people with disabilities. This session will provide an overview of what Web 2.0 is, how it can impact users with disabilities for good and for bad, and some approaches and techniques for addressing accessibility. You can read more and register at: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm Anyone who registers whether or not they attend, will be sent a link to the slides and the audio. SET A GUINNESS WORLD RECORD - ENJOY A BETTER WEB Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it's that easy. We're not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome. The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than before. Join our community and this effort by pledging today. www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=83 MAKING YOUTUBE EASIER AND MORE ACCESSIBLE SOAP's good friend and Yahoo!s secret weapon Chris Heilmann once again jimmies together a nifty piece of web work, this time making a modified player interface that makes YouTube videos more accessible, to rave reviews. Be sure to check it out! http://tinyurl.com/3p8677 OK–CANCEL OR CANCEL–OK? Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ok-cancel.html WEB ACCESSIBILITY FOR OLDER USERS: A LITERATURE REVIEW This document provides a review and analysis of guidelines and articles relating to the needs of older people with Web accessibility needs due to ageing, and compares these with the needs of people with disabilities as already addressed in WAI guidelines. The focus is particularly on Europe but applies internationally as well. This review is being undertaken in order to inform the development of educational materials which can better promote the needs of people who have accessibility needs due to ageing, and potential development of profiles and/or extensions on WAI guidelines. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-wai-age-literature-20080514/ AJAX ACCESSIBILITY A common concern of most Ajax applications has been around their resulting accessibility. While, arguably, it's possible to design some form of a usable web page without the use of JavaScript it should be possible - with the additional scripting information - to provide a better experience to users. It's at this point that the ARIA specification comes into play. A large set of interaction is defined within it which is able to help web applications communicate directly to a screen reader in an effective manner. To get a feel for what this interaction looks like, take the example of ARIA Live Regions. With this functionality it would be possible to keep a live-updated list of users and allow the screen reader to keep up-to-date. http://ejohn.org/blog/ajax-accessibility/ DESIGN DECISIONS VS. AUDIENCE CONSIDERATIONS As web designers, we have a unique and thorny task. How do we present the information we most want a visitor to see while simultaneously serving the visitor the content they came for? The two may not be the same, so an awareness of who our audience is as well as why our audience is there should be considered before a single design decision is made. http://tinyurl.com/6omoft http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=81 MARTIAN HEADSETS You're about to see the mother of all flamewars on internet groups where web developers hang out. It'll make the Battle of Stalingrad look like that time your sister-in-law stormed out of afternoon tea at your grandmother's and wrapped the Mustang around a tree. This upcoming battle will be presided over by Dean Hachamovitch, the Microsoft veteran currently running the team that's going to bring you the next version of Internet Explorer, 8.0. The IE 8 team is in the process of making a decision that lies perfectly, exactly, precisely on the fault line smack in the middle of two different ways of looking at the world. It's the difference between conservatives and liberals, it's the difference between "idealists" and "realists," it's a huge global jihad dividing members of the same family, engineers against computer scientists, and Lexuses vs. olive trees. (If you only read one article this week, make it this one - JF) http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html THE FLUID PROJECT Fluid is a worldwide collaborative project to help improve the usability and accessibility of community open source projects with a focus on academic software for universities. The Fluid component library is a growing collection of rich, reusable, accessible user interface components that can be used across web applications. These components have been designed by a cross-disciplinary team and thoroughly tested for usability and accessibility. By incorporating Fluid components into your web application's user interface, you will make your application easier to use by more people. Easier to use means happier users. http://fluidproject.org/ BRIDGING THE DESIGNER-USER GAP Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely. There are 3 different degrees of difference between designers and their users, from a small fissure to a gaping gulf. The strategy for bridging the gap depends on how severe it is. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designer-user-differences.html FINDABILITY, ORPHAN OF THE WEB DESIGN INDUSTRY The fundamental goal of findability is to persistently connect your audience with the stuff you write, design, and build. When you create relevant and valuable content, present it in a machine readable format, and provide tools that facilitate content exchange and portability, you'll help ensure that the folks you're trying to reach get your message. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findabilityorphan THE 960 GRID SYSTEM The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem. The premise of the system is ideally suited to rapid prototyping, but it would work equally well when integrated into a production environment. There are printable sketch sheets, design layouts, and a CSS file that have identical measurements. http://960.gs/ MATHTRAX MathTrax is an educational technology tool that demonstrates the combined capabilities of the MDE library modules. Its primary audience is middle and high school students studying algebra, pre-calculus and calculus and in particular it serves blind and vision impaired (BVI) math students. MathTrax fulfills a compelling educational need to demonstrate the relationship between math and real world science applications by translating and demonstrating math relationships in a tangible physical medium on a standard PC platform. Students can create graphs by entering an equation, selecting an equation from a drop-down menu, entering raw data to be analyzed or activating a physics simulation. MathTrax graphs the equations and provides descriptions of those graphs using text and sound. The text descriptions can be read by Java-capable screen readers such as Jaws for Windows, or can be input to speech synthesizing software to create self-voicing applications. MathTrax provides color and line settings for traditional "drawn" graphs to aid users with differing vision-impairments. MathTrax and the MDE SDK were selected as a 2006 NASA Software of the Year runner-up! http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/mathtrax/ CLICKTALE ClickTale is a brand new approach to website analysis and optimization. While traditional web analytics provide aggregated visitor data across web pages, we provide information about individual visitor behavior inside the web page. We show website owners movies of browsing sessions, as well as meaningful reports of behavior inside their webpage by aggregating thousands of visitor sessions. Now, website owners can gain a deeper understanding of visitor behavior, which leads to improved website usability, enhanced navigation, and increased overall website effectiveness. http://www.clicktale.com GOOD-BYE DESKTOP PC, HELLO IPHONE "My generation's concept of what it means to compute is so quaint and firmly rooted in the 20th century. Young people and teens computing 10 or 20 years from now will look back and laugh at people like me (and, most likely, their own parents and grandparents) who sat down at desks and worked on 20-pound boxes."... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2278813,00.asp @media 2008 "CSS MASTERY" WORKSHOP Date: 21-May-08 City: San Francisco Bringing his popular course based on the best-selling book of the same name to the USA for the first time, CSS expert Andy Budd delivers a day-long workshop for those looking to push their CSS skills to the limit. http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2008/sanfrancisco/workshop/ http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=79 A Brown Bag Talk by Charles McCathieNevile Known simply as Chaals throughout the Web Accessibility community, the Web Standards community (and beyond!), I am pleased beyond words to have my friend and colleague come and speak for us next week. I invite all of you to join us for an interesting and enlightening discussion. BIOGRAPHY: Charles McCathieNevile is the Chief Standards Officer at Opera Software [www.opera.com]. Before starting at Opera in 2005 he worked for about six years as a member of the W3C Staff Team, where he specialized in Semantic Web and in Accessibility. He has also worked extensively on internationalization of the web and on how to develop web content and applications for the wide range of devices which can access it. McCathieNevile holds a degree in Medieval History from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He is a proficient speaker on Web technologies, and has given presentations at venues on every continent except Antarctica. A native English speaker, he is also fluent in French and Spanish and proficient in Italian, and is able to give talks in any of those languages. Residing in Oslo, Norway, McCathieNevile spends his spare time learning Norwegian, cooking and serving as the vice president of Fundación Sidar [www.sidar.org], a non-profit organization working in Iberian languages to improve Web standards and accessibility. See also: [http://my.opera.com/chaals/about/] EVENT DETAILS: Richer Web Applications, For Anyone Anywhere Date: March 7, 2008 12–1:30pm Location: The Flex Lab - 220 Meyer Library This is a Brown Bag event. All are welcome. Please feel free to forward to interested parties. http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=77 Social networking sites may be revolutionizing internet communication, and creating new and exciting opportunities in both leisure and business, but is this Brave New World as democratic and inclusive as it appears? Pioneering research by UK based computing and disability charity, AbilityNet, of five of the most popular sites, shows that, in contrast to their apparent universal appeal, they are effectively 'locking out' disabled visitors, the majority of whom can't even register, let alone participate in the on-line communities they wish to join. The five sites reviewed - Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo, and Bebo - all failed miserably based on real user testing for both usability and accessibility issues. The full report is available as either a Word Document or tagged PDF file from the AbilityNet website at: http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/enation85 http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=75 Microsoft and open-source site SourceForge plan to offer a free plug-in early next year that will convert Office 2007 files to the Daisy format, which translates text to speech. The free tool will add a "Save as Daisy" option within Word 2007 and 2003. What's DAISY? It stands for Digital Accessible Information System, and it's essentially a format for converting text to speech. This isn't one of those parlor tricks for getting your computer to say "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Rather, DAISY is an open format used by computer programs and hardware devices that blind people can use to listen to books and text. Daisy XML files can be "read" aloud by speech synthesizers, paired with audio narration, and used to create electronic Braille. Users can navigate open-standard Daisy documents quickly by jumping between page elements such as headers and indexes. The Daisy Consortium of 70 nonprofits has aimed since 1996 to make all published information available to people with visual impairments and learning disabilities. Digital narration serves computer users with visual impairments, people with learning challenges like dyslexia, as well as those with Parkinson's disease and other conditions that make it hard to type or hold a book. With the release of the Office 2007 suite in January, Microsoft shunned the popular, XML-based OpenDocument Format for its own, new Office Open XML format. The OOXML documents, which include Word files with the DOCX extension, are easier to retrieve, if corrupted, than older DOC files. Versions of Word prior to 2007 can open OOXML documents after a one-time download of a free converter from Microsoft. However, critics gripe that Microsoft's format change was unnecessary and clumsy. Microsoft maintains that the new format enables greater flexibility, such as accessibility features. Source: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9815836-7.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=NewsBlog http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=73 In an effort to overcome technology and production barriers, the leading providers of Web-based video have joined with media access pioneer WGBH/Boston to develop solutions that will increase the amount of online video accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have asked WGBH and its Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to establish and manage the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF). The ICF will initially address the technical challenges presented by online video repurposed from broadcast or other previously captioned sources, as well as video created specifically for the Web. "More and more people are turning to the Internet to get their news, watch programs and other video," says WGBH's Director of Media Access, Larry Goldberg. "The scarcity of captions online is due to a variety of challenges, including a proliferation of media and text formats and players, editing of programs originally distributed with captions, and lack of clear online caption production and delivery requirements. The founding members of the ICF are all companies long dedicated to making their products and services accessible to people with disabilities. They recognize that working together on this challenge is the best, fastest and most practical way to get more captioned video on the Web." The collaboration is expected to yield a range of solutions and tools, among them: A database for online media distributors, populated by major captioning providers, of previously captioned programs. This tool will facilitate the location and reuse of existing caption files. Technical and standards documents, case studies and best practices for accomplishing pervasive online video captioning. .Demonstrations of innovative practices to preserve captions while editing and digitizing captioned videos. In addition to the global audience of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, beneficiaries of the ICF's initiative also include people who rely on translation engines to convert caption text into other languages, people using online video in noisy situations or at work, and search engines that use caption text to search and retrieve online videos. Cheryl Heppner, executive director of the Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons says, "The formation of the Internet Captioning Forum will become a milestone in the history of access to media. The community of people who are deaf or hard of hearing has worked for decades to achieve the access to television captioning we have now. The partnership of AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! with WGBH promises to be a major step forward for accessible online video." ICF partners share their thoughts on the collaboration: For several years now AOL has been working to tackle the range of challenges to facilitate timely delivery of captioned video content online: from the production and need for automated publishing of caption data to support for the display of captions in AOL's web-based media player. Our efforts have demonstrated that collaboration between content producers and content distributors is the best way forward to achieve wide scale availability of captioned video on the web. It is our hope that the Internet Caption Forum will provide the venue for producers and distributors to come together to define the model for production and delivery of captions on the Web. - Tom Wlodkowski, Director of Accessibility, AOL The Internet has been one of the most democratizing forces in the communications universe but it needs to accommodate the needs of all its users, including those who have need of features such as captions for audio and adaptable visual presentations. The Forum is one way in which information service providers can work together to establish reliable practices to improve access to Internet-based information. - Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google As a leader in the online media space, we recognize our responsibility to raise the level of service we supply so that it is accessible to everyone. Microsoft is pleased to join with our industry colleagues and WGBH to create solutions that will enable the industry to effectively deliver online captioned media. - Rob Sinclair, Director, Microsoft Accessibility Business Unit Yahoo! applauds the collaborative effort led by WGBH to create a solution for making online video content accessible to all. Because the need for online captioning will continue to grow across the Web, Yahoo! is excited to join with our colleagues to develop quality responses to this accessibility challenge. - Victor Tsaran, Accessibility Program Manager, Yahoo! About NCAM/WGBH The WGBH-Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is a research, development and advocacy entity that works to make existing and emerging technologies accessible to all audiences. NCAM is part of the Media Access Group at WGBH, which also includes The Caption Center (est. 1972), and Descriptive Video Service® (est. 1990). For more information, visit access.wgbh.org. WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public broadcasting producer, the source of fully one-third of PBS's prime-time lineup, along with some of public television's best-known lifestyle shows and children's programs and many public radio favorites. WGBH is also the leading producer of online content for pbs.org, one of the most-visited dot-org sites on the Web. For more information, visit www.wgbh.org. http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=71 As some of you may know, there are a set of guidelines to help web developers produce web sites that are accessible to people with disabilities, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These are currently being revised and the University of York in England is helping to conduct a study of the draft of the new version. There is a need to check the many recommendations of the new guidelines (there are some hundreds of them), so they need many people with different disabilities to try out little bits of code with different combinations of web browsers, screen readers, assistive technologies etc. Participants don’t have to know anything about web accessibility, or be particularly technical to participate, just answer simple questions about very simple web pages. And they will reimburse people for their time! The material is divided up into blocks of 20 simple (I hope!) web pages and questions, and for each block completed you get an Amazon gift voucher for US $15.00 (or local equivalent). And people are welcome to do as many blocks as you like. They are particularly looking for people who are visually disabled (who might use screen readers, screen magnification programs, or enlarge the material on a webpage using the options in their browser or in the operating system), people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, people with dyslexic, and people with physical disabilities, but all disabilities are needed. You do need to register, but that is simply to find out what combination of operating system, browser, screen reader, other devices etc you use, so you can be presented with appropriate questions and we can reimburse you with the appropriate number of gift vouchers. All information you provide is absolutely confidential and anonymous. You can register by going to: http://bentoweb.org/amfortas/register.html You then do the questions by going to: http://bentoweb.org/amfortas/sign-in.html This is a small and easy way to have a say in improving the accessibility of the web in the future! If you have any questions or comments, please contact: Helen PetrieDepartment of Computer ScienceUniversity of Yorkpetrie@cs.york.ac.uk http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=69 The Accessibility Program Manager at Yahoo!, Victor Tsaran, will be coming to Stanford to give a first hand demonstration of Screen Reading Technology, as well as discuss the needs of this user group, all from the perspective of an informed web developer, content creator, and daily user of this technology. Details Where: Main Conference Room, Office of Accessible Education, 563 Salvatierra Walk (Important Pedestrian Instructions: http://www.stanford.edu/group/OAE/directions) When: Thursday August 16, 2007 from Noon to 1:30 Please Note: This is a Brown Bag event As well as Victor demonstrating this technology and answering your questions, the Office of Accessible Education will also have a collection of some other Alternative Technology devices (hardware) on display that some clients might use when accessing web content. You are all cordially invited to join us for this informative event. Please feel free to pass this initiation on to other interested parties. See you on the 16th! http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=67 Fellow Canadian and well-known pot-stirrer Joe Clark set about in 2006 to assemble a collection of web developers concerned and knowledgeable about web accessibility, with the goal of reviewing the now 8 year old WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and offering updated recommendations and guidance. Working under the banner of the WCAG Samurai, they have finally released their "errata" in June, 2007. There are a lot of reasons why this review is important, and while it is still in "Draft" status, it is worthy reading for anyone interested in web accessibility. It most importantly recognizes that the "web" is an evolutionary medium, and that many of the guidelines issued in 1999 are antiquated and irrelevant in today's web environment; by the same token the principles that drove those recommendations remain as true today as they did 8 years ago. But 8 years is forever on the web, and this was a sorely needed review and update to an important document. While Joe's personal style has often offended others, his on-going commitment for, and contributions to web accessibility are beyond question. Congratulations are in order, for a job well done, and a personal note of thanks from one Canuck to another. The WCAG Samurai Errata document can be found at: http://wcagsamurai.org/errata/ http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=65 WGBH Access Division Creates "CC for Flash" to Simplify Captioning for Adobe Flash Technology - Accessibility and Search Enhanced by Free Tool; Easy-to-Embed Flash- Based-Media Player also Available Use of Adobe Flash technology to add dynamic and engaging video content to Web sites is growing exponentially. With WGBH's new solution, developers are able to more easily add captions in Flash. Now, millions of users who are deaf or hard of hearing are better able to experience Web-based video in Flash and search engines are able to capitalize on captions as search metadata for SWF content. WGBH, Boston's public broadcaster and a decades-long pioneer in developing access solutions to media for audiences with disabilities has created a component for Flash, CC for Flash, that can be authored into any SWF file for playback in Adobe Flash Player. The component is easy to use, and freely available from the NCAM Web site at http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/ccforflash. Funding for development of CC for Flash was provided by a grant to WGBH's Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) from the NEC Foundation of America, with additional support provided by Yahoo! CC for Flash: The Details Uses external files produced in the W3C's Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP) of the Timed-Text Authoring Format. Imports existing formats such as Apple QuickTime's QTtext, with support for Microsoft's SAMI format soon to follow. Exposes many of its internal functions through ActionScriptTM language so that the author can control and customize many of the features. Can play back caption metadata that has been embedded in the video by tools such as Captionate. Can be linked to any video playback components in Flash or directly to Netstream objects in the SWF of the FLV file. Allows the author to set the caption display box coordinates and default text attributes, like background color, text foreground color, font face and size, opacity, etc., at authoring time. At playback time, any text attributes that are explicitly defined in the external caption file will override the defaults. Captions can be added after the video content in Flash is posted, allowing for flexibility across production and distribution environments. Allows captions to be searched. Comes with an optional player, ccPlayer for Flash, which allows those unfamiliar with Flash programming to embed video content in Flash into a Web page with minimal effort. Is compatible with Flash MX2004 (7) and 8 authoring packages. http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=63 Proceedings are now available for the Web Accessibility Capacity Building Institute (CBI), held November 29 - December 1, 2006 in Seattle. The CBI was funded by the National Science Foundation (cooperative agreement #0227995) through the Northwest Alliance for Access to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (AccessSTEM), which is directed at the University of Washington. The purpose of the CBI was to identify accessibility problems and solutions related to emerging web applications and the technologies used to create them, as well as to identify strategies that lead to systemic change within higher education. The ultimate goal of AccessSTEM is to increase the successful participation of people with disabilities in STEM careers. To reach this goal, it is critical that students with disabilities have full access to the software and information used in their educational programs. Higher education institutions are exploring and beginning to utilize rich media technologies to improve functionality and usability of both academic and administrative web services, but by doing so they may risk excluding students and employees with disabilities. It is critical that accessibility be addressed early in the development and deployment of web applications, including those that utilize emerging technologies such as AJAX, Adobe Flex, and Adobe Flash. Participants at the CBI included representatives from the World Wide Consortium (W3C), IBM, Google, Yahoo, Adobe, and GW Micro, as well as 27 web managers and programmers from 11 colleges and universities, primarily from the Northwest region of the United States. The full proceedings, including a comprehensive summary of CBI presentations and discussions, is available online: www.washington.edu/doit/cbi/webaccess/proceedings.html Terry Thompson Technology Specialist, DO-IT University of Washington http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=61 The W3C WAI's work on accessibility of AJAX, DHTML, and other application technologies includes the Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Suite. Updated Working Drafts of the WAI-ARIA Suite documents were published 20 December 2006. The WAI working group encourages you to review these documents and submit any comments. See: WAI-ARIA Suite Overview, a new document Call for Review: Updated Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Working Drafts e-mail How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process: Milestones and Opportunities to Contribute Deadline for comments to the W3C/WAI is 19 January 2007. http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=59 Access to information technology creates opportunity for all, especially persons with disabilities, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a message for the International Day of Disabled Persons, observed on 3 December under the theme "E-accessibility". Mr Annan's message reads as follows: The theme of this year's observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons, "E-accessibility", reminds us of the need to make the Internet available to everyone. This is a welcome change. As information and communication technologies spread across the world, drawing in more and more users every day, most websites remained inaccessible to the millions of people who have difficulty manipulating a mouse, or who are visually impaired and need a "screen reader" or large fonts to read the page. Slowly, Governments and the private sector have been recognizing the economic and social benefits of making websites fully accessible, and have been putting in place changes involving software and hardware alike. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which is expected to be approved by the General Assembly later this month, can give additional impetus to this trend. States that choose to become party to the Convention will thereby commit themselves to taking steps to provide "information intended for the general public to persons with disabilities in accessible formats and technologies appropriate to different kinds of disabilities in a timely manner and without additional cost". The Convention urges private businesses and mass media to do the same with their services. On this International Day, let us pledge again to do our utmost to achieve the vision of an inclusive, people-centered, development-oriented information society. And let us redouble our efforts to ensure that persons with disabilities can exercise their human rights and play their full part in the economic, social and political lives of their societies. Over 10% of the world's population suffers from a variety of disabilities and ICTs have great potentials for making significant improvements in the lives of these persons as they can compensate for physical or functional limitations, thus allowing them to enhance their social and economic integration in communities by enlarging the scope of activities available to them. UNESCO works with its partners to promote the use of ICT for including people with disabilities in strategies for information and knowledge access. Recently, UNESCO co-organized with the Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science (SALIS) and the Madras School of Social Work (MSSW) a Workshop on Information Literacy Competency Development for Library and Information Science Professionals and Special Educators at MSSW in Chennai, India. (6-10 November 2006). http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=58 Google has become a verb. Everyone Googles. However, in the past, getting usable results from Google with screen reading technology was confusing at best, and tricky to down-right difficult for some users. But Google has been listening, and working to improve their accessibility, and that work is starting to pay off. Now, when you carry out a search using Google, you will find that each result returned is a heading at level 2 (<h2>Result Title</h2>). This not only makes finding the first search result very easy to do within a screen reader environment, but you can also quickly move through all the results without encountering the rest of the links, such as Cached or similar pages. So, you can use the "next heading" command repeatedly (a keyboard shortcut that most screen reading technology affords) to move through the results. A list of headings can also be brought into view with "select a heading", which can also be used for inter-page navigation (think named-anchors). The visual display of the Google search results remains unchanged, but with the addition of this semantic structural change their results just got a whole lot more accessible. Bravo and kudos to Google! http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=57 November 14th is World Usability Day, a global celebration of usability concepts, ideas and solutions with a focus this year on accessibility and inclusion. With events scheduled in such far-flung locales as Reykjavik, Iceland and Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, this truly is a global event. There are four events happening locally in the San Francisco bay area, and details follow. This year's theme: "Making Life Easy!" "Why doesn't this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?" World Usability Day is for everyone who's ever asked these questions. This Earth Day style event, focused on raising awareness and visibility of usability engineering and user centered design, is currently being organized by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether a usability professional or just an enthusiastic (or frustrated) user, each participant is making a contribution to "making life easy". World Usability Day 2006 promotes the value of usability engineering and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the responsibility to ask for things that work better. The Usability Professionals' Association is doing that by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring 36 hours of activities at the local level around the globe, all occurring on November 14, 2006. The UPA, UPA chapters, and allied organizations will all hold events, revolving around a common theme - "Making life easy!" - with a focus this year on accessibility and inclusion. The importance of usability is not trivial; it is connected to important everyday things such as education, healthcare and safety. Tools and systems that are usable are more effective in teaching students. Healthcare professionals can be more confident with safer and understandable tools providing better quality healthcare to their patients. Government institutions can rely on easy to use and understandable voting machines to insure accurate and democratic elections. Usable technology makes a difference to everyone, everywhere around the world. Structured Negotiations for Accessible Information Technology Start time: 11:00 (PST) | Finish time: 12:00 (PST) 2006-11-14T11:00:00 2006-11-14T12:00:00 Event Location: webcast only Learn about Structured negotiations -- a collaborative advocacy method that has been used by the disability community in the United States to negotiate twenty five legal agreements on issues including Talking ATMs, accessible websites, tactile point of sale devices and alternative formats. Event Details This session will describe a successful advocacy method that has been used in the United States over the past ten years to achieve accessible technology such as Talking ATMs, accessible websites, tactile point of sale devices and alternative format systems. The presenter is a disability rights lawyer who has used the method -- known as Structured Negotiations -- to negotiate binding legal agreements with some of the world's largest corporations, including Bank of America, American Express, Walmart and 7-Eleven. Structured negotiations has resulted in tens of thousands of Talking ATMs being installed in the United States and around the world. As a result of the method, many financial institutions have agreed to make their websites accessible in accordance with the Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium (w3c). The method emphasizes collaboration amongst the disability community, technology providers, businesses and lawyers, and avoids the pitfalls of protracted and adversarial litigation. Anyone interested in achieving accessibility without lawsuits is most welcomed to attend. RSVP RSVP for this event by emailing lfeingold@earthlink.net. If you need an accommodation for accessibility, please include details. Access to Books for People with Print Disabilities Increasing access to books through scanning and direct relationships with publishers through the Bookshare.org project. Start time: 13:00 (PST) | Finish time: 14:00 (PST) 2006-11-14T13:00:00 2006-11-14T14:00:00 Event Location: Webcast only Event Details Jim Fruchterman, head of Benetech and founder of Bookshare.org, will talk about increasing access to books through scanning and direct relationships with publishers through the Bookshare.org project. RSVP RSVP for this event by clicking the email link below. If you need an accommodation for accessibility, please include details. Please RSVP, including any requests for accessibility accommodations, by emailing WUDweb@inclusive.com Improving the Online User Experience Start time: 15:00 (PST) | Finish time: 18:00 (PST) 2006-11-14T15:00:00 2006-11-14T18:00:00 This eventis intended as a fun celebration of World Usability Day, and an opportunity to network with others interested in user experience -- with an emphasis on the online world. Join other Bay area UX professionals as we celebrate one of the last live events of World Usability Day 2006. Event Location: Keynote Systems, Inc. 777 Mariners Island Blvd. San Mateo, CA 94404 See map Event Details There will be expert Keynote consultants available for one-on-one discussions about best practices in online user experience. There will also be demonstrations of Keynote WebEffective 5.0, the latest release of Keynote's customer experience research tool. Hors d'ouevres and cocktails will be served, and all attendees will be eligible to win raffle prizes. RSVP Please RSVP to ed.korenman@keynote.com SIGCHI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter: Monthly Program Start time: 19:30 (PST) | Finish time: 21:30 (PST) 2006-11-14T19:30:00 2006-11-14T21:30:00 Event Location: PARC's George E. Pake Auditorium 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA See map Event Details Full event details: http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20061114/ From Counterculture To Cyberculture: How The Whole Earth Catalog Brought Us Virtual Community Fred Turner, Assistant Professor, Stanford Department of Communication In 1993 just as the Internet was swinging into public view, journalist Howard Rheingold brought a new phrase to public discussions of computer-mediated communication: virtual community. Within months, the phrase had spread from researchers to programmers to corporate CEOs, and virtual communities seemed poised to become one of the defining social formations of the Internet age. Yet the notion of virtual community substantially predates the advent of networked computing. This presentation will trace the origins of the concept within the Whole Earth network of publications and people. It will show how the rhetoric of virtual community first emerged as what historian Peter Galison has called a "contact language" on one of the most influential computer networks of the 1980s, the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the WELL). It will then demonstrate that the communities who used the early WELL system and the system itself embodied networks and networking habits of mind first developed around the Whole Earth Catalog some twenty years before. Thanks to these connections, Rheingold and other WELL users helped transform a countercultural vision of community into a powerful symbolic resource with which they - and we - have continued to frame our understandings of technological and economic change. Fred Turner is an assistant professor and the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory (Anchor/Doubleday, 1996/second edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2001). Before coming to Stanford, he taught Communications at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and MIT's Sloan School of Management. He also worked for ten years as a journalist. He wrote for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Boston Phoenix, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and the Pacific News Service. During the academic year 2007-2008, he will be a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Be the Ball Greg Niemeyer and Joe McKay, UC Berkeley In their creative research and artwork, Joe McKay and Greg Niemeyer explore play as a key method for connecting world and mind. They consider all games as serious games, as they all model modes of interaction between players and the gamespace, and allow players to test diverse strategies for "being in the world". Game interfaces define the physical aspect of such interactions and shape the gameplay experience. Niemeyer and McKay discuss how specific interfaces in their projects define gameplay. They also ask how their projects subvert traditional expectations of interaction, and allow players to experience alternative ways of interacting in real life. After reviewing their separate projects The Color Game, Big Ups, Oxygen Flute, and Good Morning Flowers, they will demonstrate their joint effort, Be the Ball, a game about focus, balance, and being the ball. Joe McKay is an artist who makes work with and about digital culture. McKay grew up in Ontario, Canada and went to school at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. In 2001 McKay participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program and had a two-person collaborative exhibition with Kristin Lucas titled "The Electric Donut." He has shown his work in the Berkshire museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the ICA in San Jose, an the New Museum. Currently Joe is pursuing his MFA at UC Berkeley. Greg Niemeyer was born in Switzerland in 1967. Niemeyer studied classics and photography. He started working with new media when he arrived in the Bay Area in 1992 and he received his MFA from Stanford University in New Media in 1997. At the same time, he founded the Stanford University Digital Art Center, which he directed until 2001, when he was appointed at UC Berkeley as assistant professor for New Media. At UC Berkeley, he is involved in the development of the Center for New Media, focusing on the critical analysis of the impact of new media on human experiences. Greg & Joe are currently co-teaching the course "Foundations of American Cyberculture," presently being taught at UC Berkeley. The lectures from this course are available as podcasts. His creative work focuses on the mediation between humans as individuals and humans as a collective through technological means, and emphasizes playful responses to technology. His most recognized projects were Gravity (Cooper Union, NYC, 1997), PING (SFMOMA, 2001), Oxygen Flute (SJMA, 2002), Organum (Pacific Film Archive, 2003), Ping 2.0 (Paris, La Villette Numerique, 2004), Organum Playtest (2005), and Good Morning Flowers (SFIFF 2006, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, 2006). Add these events to your calendar http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=56 One area often overlooked when discussing "compliance" is regional differences, requirements and obligations for entities outside of one's home country. The internet has truly created a global community, however the role and impact that the notion of sovereignty plays is still young and untested: Currently, online accessibility requirements are still the purview of individual nations. For this reason, attention to international accessibility requirements may have a significant impact on collaborative arrangements and locally produced web content for international consumption. International Requirements: The definitive collection of international requirements is archived at the W3C/WAI site [www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/], and should always be referenced for the most up-to-date information. A high level overview follows, and is accurate as of October 23, 2006. The most significant guidance regarding online accessibility requirements is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1 (WCAG 1), published by the W3C in May 1999. [www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html] The WCAG 1 provides 65 specific guideline checkpoints, and has 3 levels of Priority: Priority 1 (A) "A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint." (16 checkpoints) Priority 2 (AA) "A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint." (30 checkpoints) Priority 3 (AAA) "A Web content developer may address this checkpoint." (19 checkpoints) Most countries reference the W3C/WCAG 1, although curiously (or typically, depending on your perspective) without defining a level of Priority compliance. European Union: The EU states: [www.legi-internet.ro/index.php?id=149&L=2] The Web Accessibility Initiative by the World Wide Web Consortium has developed a series of guidelines including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (1) (hereinafter referred to as "the Guidelines") which have become a de facto standard used worldwide for the creation of accessible websites. The abovementioned Commission communication draws, inter alia, the following conclusions: national administrations should seek constantly to improve the accessibility of their web pages and explore new and better ways to deliver web content and services as new technologies and new versions of the Guidelines are developed, the eEurope website will present the progress towards adoption and implementation of the Guidelines by the European Institutions and the Member States, measures for awareness-raising, dissemination, education and especially training in Web accessibility should be promoted in both the European institutions and the Member States, within the framework of the eEurope Action Plan, Member States should encourage not only national public websites but also local and regional public websites to comply with the Guidelines, "European institutes and member state governments are asked to fulfill priority 1 as well as priority 2 of the W3C/WCAG guidelines. However, the resolution is not binding." - www.disabilityworld.org/09-10_02/access/internetaccess.shtml United Kingdom: The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) is "an Act to make it unlawful to discriminate against disabled persons in connection with employment, the provision of goods, facilities and services or the disposal or management of premises; to make provision about the employment of disabled persons; and to establish a National Disability Council." While the text of the DDA does not directly address web accessibility, there are strong indications that the DDA could successfully be applied to web sites and that the WCAG would be used in determining web accessibility. In March of 2006, the UK Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in collaboration with the British Standards Institution (BSI) released a document "PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites" which again references the WCAG, but again without defining a level of compliance. By experience and knowledge, I personally feel that the UK is probably the most sophisticated in terms or awareness and implementation, and most UK-based web accessibility advocates/developers/etc. generally feel that compliance to Level 2 would be an expected norm. However, as yet, there has been no legal precedence set, and so this is mostly conjecture. Disability Rights Commission: PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites - www.drc.org.uk/library/website_accessibility_guidance/pas_78.aspx (One electronic copy of the guidance is available free per individual. ) British Standards Institution: PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites - www.bsi-global.com/ICT/PAS78/index.xalter Australia: "The provision of information and online services through the Worldwide Web is a service covered by the DDA. Equal access for people with a disability in this area is required by the [Australian] DDA where it can reasonably be provided. This requirement applies to any individual or organization developing a Worldwide Web page in Australia, or placing or maintaining a Web page on an Australian server. This includes pages developed or maintained for purposes relating to employment; education; provision of services including professional services, banking, insurance or financial services, entertainment or recreation, telecommunications services, public transport services, or government services; sale or rental of real estate; sport; activities of voluntary associations; or administration of Commonwealth laws or programs. All these are areas specifically covered by the DDA." An early pioneering territory for web accessibility, the first successful legal challenge against an "inaccessible" site was against the 2000 Sydney Olympic website (Bruce Lindsay Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games - http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/ddadec/0/2000/0/DD000120.htm). Here, the WCAG was referenced as the de facto standard, but again the level of compliancy was omitted. The Australian Human Rights website states: "In June 2000, the Online Council, representing the Commonwealth and all State and Territory governments, agreed that the Worldwide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 will be the common best practice standard for all Australian government websites." www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html#s3_3 Canada: Currently, the only entity mandated to any form of compliance is the Canadian Federal Government, who, through their Common Look and Feel Standards have adopted the WCAG as a de facto standard, and further have mandated compliance to Priority 2. [ www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf-nsi/inter/inter-01-01_e.asp ] Common opinion is that should a legal challenge be launched in Canada, this requirement would be referenced. Summary The biggest problem the web accessibility community has is the lack of hard legal precedence. As such, most opinion is just that, opinion. However, within this same community of experts there is an emerging consensus that achieving Priority 2 compliance should be the minimum goal, and it is generally thought that this will be the benchmark referenced if/when further legal challenges emerge. Of recent US interest is a case currently before the courts (NFB and Bruce "BJ" Sexton v. Target.com) who are launching their challenge not only under ADA provisions (not Section 508!), but also California State legislation (California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the California Disabled Persons Act). See: www.jimthatcher.com/law-target.htm for a good over-view www.out-law.com/page-6634 for a more "legal-based" opinion Finally, one area often overlooked is the business case for creating and providing content that is accessible. Organizations and other content developers that can consistently meet the WCAG guidelines will have a competitive advantage over those that can't. Producing accessible web content needs to be integrated into all aspects of the work flow - web accessibility is not a bolt on feature. Organizations that adopt a holistic approach to online accessibility are better prepared to compete now and into the future. Related Articles on this site: Web Accessibility Standards and Guidelines - An Overview W3C Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Section 508 Checklist IBM Web accessibility checklist - version 3.5 http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=55 The National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) will be hosting a free Webcast on Wednesday, Oct. 25th at 12:00 noon (Pacific). From their website: Captioning web multimedia is one of the biggest accessibility issues faced in education. Current technology and cost limitations make captioning, especially of live events, prohibitive for many in education. Yet to meet Accessibility requirements and guidelines we must provide captioning, not simply for users who are hearing impaired, but also for situations where audio may either not be available due to technology (no sound card, no speakers, etc.), or because the environment precludes the user's ability to hear the material (Library, noisy environment such as a warehouse or outdoors). There are, as yet, no easy answers, but this Webcast, hosted by WebAIM's Jared Smith and featuring Adobe's Andrew Kirkpatrick (Corporate Accessibility Engineering Lead) should prove to illuminate and perhaps help point the way forward. More information and to register: http://ncdae.org/webcasts/webcaptioning.cfm - External Link Add this event to your calendar Web Captioning and its uses in Education The webcast is free of charge. You will be able to tune in to the audio-only broadcast free of charge beginning 10 minutes before the broadcast begins. The broadcast will last approximately one hour. You will be able to tune in using your computer using either Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Archives (transcript and audio) will be available shortly after the conclusion of the broadcast. The broadcast will be captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing and archives will be available a few days after the conclusion of the broadcast. See: http://ncdae.org/webcasts/webcaptioning.cfm The National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) web site 2006-10-25T12:00:00 2006-10-25T13:00:00 http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=54 AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is the hot and happening new web technology - all the really cool sites are using it now, right? It's all about the user experience, right? Well, perhaps, but more often than not that user experience is flawed for as many as 25% of your site's visitors. Furthermore, using AJAX may actually be hurting your web site. But don't just take my word for it, read all about it yourself. Collected below is a series of articles and opinions that hopefully will leave you with the same conclusion - if you're going to use AJAX, you had better be prepared to works twice as hard, and possibly maintain 2 versions of your web properties: there often is no other way. 10 Must Read articles on AJAX, Accessibility and Web 2 technology It appears to be the "must-have" technology at the moment, and a lot of uses for it seem to be contrived. I do see a need for it, but its strength is for web applications, rather than traditional web documents. It reminds me a bit of when Flash first arrived on the scene, and everyone felt the need to learn Flash in order to showcase their skills, with little regard to the true usability of what they were doing. - Gez Lemon http://soap.stanford.edu/showlog.php?weblogid=53 A federal district court judge ruled September 7th that a retailer may be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind. The ruling was issued in a case brought by the National Federation of the Blind against Target Corp. (Northern District of California Case No. C 06-01802 MHP) The suit charges that Target's website (http://www.target.com) is inaccessible to the blind, and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the California Disabled Persons Act. Target asked the court to dismiss the action by arguing that no law requires Target to make its website accessible. The Court denied Target's motion to dismiss and held that the federal and state civil rights laws do apply to a website such as target.com. While the legal wrangling will continue for some time, the ruling is precedent setting in that it clearly links providing accessible web content to the ADA, and because it involves a commercial entity, it further shows that no-one is excempt from producing content that meets at least a minimum standard (although, sadly, the standard was not established in the ruling). We will continue to watch this case as it develops.